Last night we went to get little Pipsie for her evening run, usually a very happy time. Pipsie loves to wait on her shelf for us to get her out and say, “Goodnight.” I picked her up and noticed something was wrong, she was not on her shelf but in one of her plastic tunnels. While holding her, waiting for Derek to finish feeding the gerbils, I noticed her tail was very floppy. Putting her on the floor it became apparent that she had lost the use of her back legs. We were both absolutely shocked and horrified, Pipsie had been a little wobbly at dinner time but nothing serious enough to concern us.
As Pipsie was in no pain we decided not to call out the vet, so I stayed up all night with her making sure she was comfortable and was drinking and eating. The next morning we took her to see the vet and we had already prepared ourselves for the worst. Our vets are very good with small animals, they explained that there was very little they could do and anything we tried would probably be very distressing for Pipsie. We all agreed it would be unfair to Pipsie to experiment with treatments that may not even work. Pipsie was two years and ten months old, the oldest little rat we have known. As with all our rats her character and zest for life was amazing and we are really going to miss her.
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